Long Range Planning, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 75 to 81, 1989
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75
International Business Through
Barter and Countertrade
Raj Aggarwal
This paper starts with a definition and review of barter and
countertrade and the reasons for their growth in modern times.
The author develops a classification scheme for the various
forms of countertrade based on the time horizon and the
degree of capitalinvolved. In addition, he provides a conceptual framework for understanding the various forms of
countertrade. He concludes by examining corporate opportunities and risks in countertrade.
World trade continues to grow faster than world
production
in spite of mounting
protectionism.
One reason may be the increased role being played
by barter and countertrade,
forms of trade especially
designed to overcome barriers. It is a paradox that
these ancient forms of trade, predating the use of
money, continue
to be popular and continue
to
grow in importance.
This article addresses this
puzzle and evaluates the role of countertrade
as part
of the strategy of a modern corporation.
Modern countertrade covers various forms oftrading
arrangements where part or all of the payment for the
purchased goods or services may be in the form of
other goods or services. It is an adult version of
children trading in cigarette cards and marbles (for
similar reasons i.e. lack of cash and trade of ‘priceless’
items). Because of its recent and projected growth
and its ability to overcome market imperfections and
for extraordinary
profits,
provide
opportunities
countertrade
should be assessed as an important part
of business strategy, especially by companies that
operate internationally.
This article
barter and
growth in
papers on
framework
the various
starts with a definition and review of
countertrade
and the reasons for their
modern times. Next, unlike most other
this topic, it provides
a conceptual
useful for understanding
and managing
forms of countertrade.
It concludes by
Raj Aggarwal is Mellen Professor of Finance, John Carroll University,
Cleveland, Ohio.
briefly examining
in countertrade.
corporate
opportunities
and risks
Growth of Countertrade
No reliable figures as to its overall
volume are
available as there is much secrecy in this business.
Estimates are unreliable especially since it is estimated that only one in twenty deals that is discussed
actually goes through.
The U.S. Department
of
Commerce
estimates
that countertrade
involves
over 20 per cent of all world trade. While others have
estimated it to be 30 per cent of all world trade,‘-’
some companies
specializing in countertrade
estimate it to be as much as 40 per cent of all world
trade. In any case, as any of these estimates indicate,
countertrade
has grown to be an important
part of
doing business across borders.
Countertrade
is a higher percentage of total trade in
some areas of the world such as the COMECON
(Eastern European) countries and the less developed
countries (LDCs), while it is a lower percentage for
trade among developed
countries.’
Countertrade
started by being important
in trade with COMECON countries. Later, it grew in importance
in
trade with the developing
and newly industrialized
countries such as Brazil, Mexico, China, Indonesia,
Iran and Nigeria
and now has even become
important
in large trade deals among developed
countries
such as Sweden,
Switzerland,
Austria,
Canada, Japan and Italy. While U.S. companies are
just recently becoming
aware of it, European and
Japanese companies
have had longer experience
with countertrade.
Many countertrade
deals run into the hundreds of
millions of dollars (some are even in the billion
dollar range). Both India and China, for example,
have prepared billion dollar government
purchasing lists with much of each to be paid for by
reciprocal or countertrade
arrangements.
The Purchasing World magazine estimates that 48 per cent of
all U.S. purchasing agents already engage in some
form of barter.
76
Long Range
Planning
Vol. 22
June 1989
Examples of modern countertrade
include a wide
range of transactions,
from simple to increasingly
complex
deals. The simplest examples
involve
various forms of barter. They include, for example,
the sale of recordings of the Swedish group Abba in
the COMECON
countries in exchange for commodities such as fresh fruits, chemicals, and even
machine
tools which
are then sold for hard
currencies in Western Europe. As another example,
the British
subsidiary
of PepsiCo
sends Pepsi
concentrate
to Soviet bottling plants and in payment receives bottles of Stolichnaya vodka which is
then marketed in the West.
Chrysler sold 200 pickup trucks to Jamaica in 1982
in a more complicated
five party barter deal
involving aluminum ore. Flush from this success, it
has since engaged in other barter deals involving
simultaneous
trading
of Peruvian
copper
ore,
Sudanese cotton and Liberian rubber, coffee and
cocoa. The Douglas Aircraft Company sold Yugoslavia seven DC-9 airplanes. It was paid partly in cash
but also agreed to sell S9m worth ofYugoslav
goods
in western markets including
S40,OOO worth of
hams for its cafeterias.*
In another type of countertrade
allowing trade over
a longer time period, East Germany
and Brazil
agreed to barter machine tools for coffee so that at
the end of their 2 year bilateral trade agreement, the
value of machine tools bought by Brazilian companies must equal the value of coffee bought by the
East Germans. However,
Brazil ended up buying
machine tools valued at about 30 per cent more than
the coffee bought by the East Germans. The East
Germans then sold their coffee contract obligation
(at a discount) to a western private company
for
hard currency. This company arranged a three-way
transaction in which Israel ‘sold’ potash to Poland
which in turn ‘sold’ sugar to Brazil which ‘sold’
coffee to Israel. All three ‘sales’ were arranged and
agreed simultaneously
and the values of the three
commodities
‘sold’ were exactly equal.
Another
type of long term countertrade
deal is
illustrated by the ease of Technip of France building
a chemical plant in the Peoples Republic of China
and planning to recover the cost of its equipment
and services by selling part of the plants output in
western countries. Similarly, General Tire furnished
equipment
and technology
for a Rumanian
truck
tyre plant in exchange for radial truck tyres from
that plant (marketed
brand).?
As these examples of increasingly complex countertrade deals indicate, countertrade
covers a wide
range of transactions. The next section is an attetnpt
to bring some order to this chaos by classifying these
various countertrade
transactions.
Classifying
Countertrade
Arrangements
This section clarifies the terminology
used in
countertrade,
classifies its various forms, and presents a two-dimensional
framework
useful for
understanding
its various forms.
The terminology
used in countertrade
is unfortunately characterized
by a lack of standardization.
A
number of different expressions are often used to
mean the same thing and sometimes
the same
expression is used with several different meanings.
Examples of some terms used are: barter, countertrade, counterpurchase,
countersale, clearing agreebilateral
trading,
offset
ments,
switch
trading,
trading, reciprocal trading, parallel trading, linked
trading,
triangular
trading,
compensation
agreements or arrangements,
buy-sell, pay-back,
backto-back transactions, and other terms too numerous
to list here. All of these represent trading arrangements that use a mixture of money and goods and
services to obtain goods and services from another
country.
However,
the many forms of countertrade
can be
classified into four major categories,
i.e. barter,
clearing arrangements,
switch trading, and compensation arrangements.
Each of these four categories are explained in greater detail below.
Barter
Barter is a one time exchange of goods with no
direct use of money. There can be many variations
of this basic exchange:
(4
Parallel barter or counterpurchase
or buy-back
takes place when goods are exchanged for equal
amounts of money.
o-4Offset
is parallel barter with a promise to assist in
the sale of goods replacing one of the contractual
obligations to purchase goods.
(4
‘Other examples of this type of barter include the General Motors’
exchange of 1400 automobiles (Opels) for a trainload of strawberries.
Control Data sold a computer for a package of Polish furniture,
Hungarian carpet backing and Soviet greeting cards. Ford of U.K. sold
s6m worth of its automobiles to Uruguay in exchange for sheepskins
which were then made into car seat covers and sold through its
European dealer network. It has also ‘sold’ automobiles in exchange
for Spanish potatoes, Finnish toilet seats, Norwegian cranes and
Columbian coffee. General Electric recently sold two nuclear steam
generating turbines worth $121 m to Rumania and agreed to purchase
an equal value of Rumanian goods.
in the west under the ‘Victoria’
Reverse reciprocity
is parallel barter for scarce
goods such as oil for nuclear power plants.
tAdditional examples include the transaction where Occidental
Petroleum agreed to a 20 year fertilizer deal with the Soviet Union
under which it will exchange its superphosphoric acid for Soviet
ammonia, urea and potash. Surplus U.S. agricultural products were
traded in the 1950s and 1960s for political goodwill overseas for the
local (inconvertible) currencies used to pay for goods and services
needed by the U.S. military abroad. And the list goes on.
Barter
(4
Multilateral
barter is a chain of barter transactions contracted simultaneously
among more
than two parties.
(4
Parallel barter with co-operation
is a set of two
offsetting parallel barter arrangements
between
three organizations.
(0
Barter with co-operation
and bank credit allows
for a timing difference between the two parts of
a parallel barter.
Examples ofbarter. These include transactions such as
Occidental
Petroleum’s
exchange of its phosphate
rock for molten sulphur of equal value each year
from Poland. Volkswagen’s
sale of 10,000 automobiles (Rabbits) to East Germany
for other East
German goods.*
Clearing Arrangements
These are bilateral trade agreements
between two
countries who agree to exchange specified amounts
of goods and services over a specified time period.
Each country extends to the other a line of credit in
terms of an artificial clearing currency
that can
usually be used only to purchase the goods offered
under the agreement.
The balance of trade in these
goods may ‘swing’ only up to a certain maximum
amount in either countries’ favour (say 30 per cent
of the total). Trading
under these arrangements
generally stops until the unfavourable
balance of
trade, the ‘swing’, is eliminated or reduced from its
maximum
amount.
Examples of clearing arrangements. It was estimated
recently that 83 countries had at least one clearing
arrangement
and a number of these countries had
numerous clearing arrangements.
For example, the
U.S.S.R.
had 30, Mexico 19, Brazil 17, and even
France had 12. Specific
examples
of clearing
arrangements
include Moroccan oranges for Soviet
capital equipment;
Hungarian electrical equipment
for Egyptian
cotton; a Soviet clearing agreement
with India that allows Britain’s Rank Xerox to
export copiers from India to the U.S.S.R.
Switch Trading
This occurs when
a bilateral clearing
party by a switch
brokers operate in
credits in bilateral
parties.
the responsibility
for completing
arrangement
is shifted to a third
trading broker. Switch trading
a secondary market to sell unused
clearing arrangements
to third
‘Other examples include, Pepsi’s use of its Hungarian cash for
expenses for the movie ‘The Ninth Configuration’, which was
distributed in California. The Japanese exchange of light armanentsfor
oil from the Middle East. Pakistani cotton for jute from Bangladesh.
Pan Am exchange of an hour-long Spanish TV program for two
60 second commercials on Latin American television stations. Egyptian oil for Indian fabricated industrial products. Argentine grain for
Venezuelan iron ore. Northrup and G.E. commitment to market s500m
worth of Swiss goods as part of s500m contract for F5 fighter jets
(offset barter). The exchange of a Canadian communication satellite
for an equal value of Brazilian goods.
and Countertrade
77
Switch trading can be a tricky business especially
since there are often legal restrictions on the sale in
third countries of goods covered by such bilateral
clearing arrangements.
Sometimes
these legal restrictions are actually enforced and other times they
are there only for appearance. There is also often a
great deal of artificiality
in the prices of products
covered by such switch credits, and broker discounts
vary from 5-6 per cent for some commodities
to as
much as 40 per cent for some high technology
products.
Switch trading can often be combined
with various financing arrangements
to structure
complex countertrade
deals.
Examples of switch trading. These include U.S. tyre
making equipment
for a COMECON
country’s
clearing credits exchanged for Turkish lira credits in
with
the COMECON
a bilateral
agreement
country. The Turkish lira were used to buy chrome
from Turkish sources which was then sold for hard
currency. As another example, Greece sold 81m of
Rumanian
credits for 5700,000 of hard currency.
These credits were used by an African country to
purchase Rumanian
canned goods. Iranian credits
for Polish shoes worth S200,OOO were sold to a
switch broker for 5160,000 who, in turn, sold them
to a buyer in East Africa for 3165,000.
Compensation Agreements
These are the countertrade
equivalent
to foreign
equity investments
in countries where such investments are either not welcome or are ideologically
not permissible (for example, when it is not possible
to own a factory
in a communist
country).
Typically,
a western MNC will supply equipment
and technology
for a plant and agree to take full or
partial payment, spread over a number of years, in
the form of the goods produced by that plant.
Examples of compensation arrangements. A Yugoslav
licensee of Fiat supplies automobiles back to Fiat for
resale. Monarch
Wine Company
equipment
and
technology
are provided to China in exchange for
beer and vodka from the plant and distribution
rights to China’s Tsingtao brand beer. Pierre Cardin
technical advice is provided to China in exchange
for its silks and cashmeres. An East German auto
transmission plant costing $370m was built by the
French company Citroen, and is being paid for with
auto transmissions exported from that plant back to
Citroen. Levi jeans are produced in Hungary with
Levi paying with part of the output. General Motors
technology
was provided to a van plant in Poland in
exchange for part of the plant’s output in the form
of auto parts.
As the above classification
indicates,
the four
categories of countertrade
differ in terms of their
complexity
with regard to the time period and the
degree
to which
money
is involved.
Figure 1
illustrates a possible classification scheme.
According
to a 1984 survey,
clearing
arrangements
Long Range
78
t
Planning
Compensation
Agreements
Vol. 22
June 1989
Clearing
Arrangements
E
.;
r”
E
i=
Use of money
Countertrade
through bilateral and multilateral
trade agreements
may strengthen
political ties
between countries and may serve as a conduit
for foreign aid. It may also be used to develop
self-sufficiency within a region or an ideological
block.
(f )
Countertrade
can be used as an alternative
to
foreign equity investments, especially in areas of
high risk. Countertrade
and contract manufacturing
allows MNCs
access to lower
cost
Countertrade
allows
MNCs
an
resources.
opportunity
to serve huge markets not otherwise available, e.g. 260 million Soviets, 105 million other COMECON
residents, over a billion
Chinese, 700 million Indians, etc.
-
countertrade
accounted for 55 per cent of all U.S. countertrade
transactions,
compensation
for 33 per cent, switch
trading for 8 per cent, and barter for 4 per cent.J
This survey also found that the proportion
of
countertrade
varied between industries with 47 per
cent of aerospace exports involved in countertrade
to 20 per cent in electronics and defense and 15 per
cent in minerals and chemicals.
Bases for Countertrade
Why has countertrade
grown so rapidly and will it
continue to grow? What are the economic driving
forces propelling
its growth?
Answers to these
questions
are important
for understanding
and
evaluating countertrade
opportunities.
Reasons for the Growth of Countertrade
There are many reasons for the growth
trade. These include:
(4
(4
Switch
Trades
Barter
:igure 1. Classifying
tertrade disguises dumping and discounting.
It
helps maintain
artificial prices in periods of
temporary
surpluses
or in periods
when
exchange
rates are maintained
at unrealistic
levels.
of counter-
Limited access to hard currency
finances for
most LDCs and COMECON
countries. Countertrade avoids deterioration
of payment
imbalances.
(b) Protectionism.
By linking exports and imports
in countertrade,
there is often no net loss ofjobs.
Occasionally, jobs may even be created on a net
basis. Countertrade
is a viable response
to
increasingly
widespread
restrictions
on international trade and investment.
(4
New markets can be developed for a countries’
products with countertrade
since it often beings
in much needed marketing
and quality control
skills. Countertrade
is often viewed as a good
way to ‘prime’ a western market for a developing countries’ goods. Thus, countertrade
can be
especially important
for countries
with small
internal markets.
(4
Surplus
and poorer
quality
goods
can be
bundled with other goods and sold. Such goods
may otherwise be difficult to sell. This can be an
important
consideration
for centrally planned
economies
and for the western
countries’
smokestack industries with overcapacity.
Coun-
Countertrade
continues to grow as it is profitable
and creates value for the participants.
Why is it
profitable? In purely competitive
markets opportunities for earning extraordinary
profits are usually
unavailable.
However,
market imperfections
can
provide
opportunities
with this potential.
Thus,
countertrade
can be particularly
profitable, primarily because it is a method for overcoming
government restrictions
and other market imperfections
that restrain cross-border
movement
of goods and
services. The next section examines these reasons for
countertrade
in more detail and provides a conceptual framework
useful in understanding
and evaluating potential opportunities.
A Conceptual Framework
Barter, countertrade,
and their variations, generally
referred to as countertrade,
are transactions that take
place outside of normal competitive
markets. When
compaed
to money-based
transactions,
countertrade suffers from a number of rigidities.j These
include ‘the need for a coincidence
of needs’,6 the
difficulty of assessing values of products to be traded
without reference to market prices,’ and the need to
trade indivisible pr0ducts.j
In order to overcome
these disadvantages,
countertrade takes place only when market imperfections
make it impossible to clear markets and true market
clearing prices are difficult or impossible to determine. Thus, countertrade
is most likely to occur
when various market imperfections
make it difficult
or impossible to develop market-clearing
prices for
the goods being traded. Thus, opportunities
for
profitable countertrade
are most likely to be found
associated with market imperfections.
The first category of market imperfections
relate to
the costs of restrictions on cross-border
investments
often imposed
by governments.’
In economic
Barter
terms, this often creates a principle-agent
problem
where utility maximization
by individual firms may
not lead to actions optimum for the nation. In such
cases of market failure, it may be optimal for a
government
to allow certain types of countertrade
while restricting
the free cross-border
flows of
goods and services. Thus, multinational
companies
can often use countertrade
to access markets for their
outputs or to develop sources for their inputs that
are inaccessible
through
normal
free market
channels.2
A second category of market imperfections
that are
likely to give rise to conditions
suitable
for
countertrade
include fnancial market pressures that
result in the maintenance
of non-market
interest
rates and exchange
rates. With
officially
set
exchange
rates, many countries
face persistent
shortages
of hard, convertible
currencies
while
many companies
in such countries
also face a
persistent
lack of trade financing.’
Since these
conditions can be mitigated by countertrade,
they
are likely to lead to increased use of countertrade.lO.”
Similarly,
when exchange rates exhibit persistent
and significant deviations from purchasing power
parity (for example because of capital flows or
because of government
restrictions),
countries may
find it necessary to disguise the international
market
prices of their goods and find it convenient
to
restrict
free cross-border
flow of goods again
encouraging
the use of countertrade.
A third category of market imperfections
that lead
to countertrade
are related to the needs to obtain and
purchase non-traded
goods such as higher employment levels in a given region (for example, through
protective measures), foreign political benefits such
as foreign aid and military alliances, and illegal and
banned products such as drugs, armaments, nuclear
fuel and other equipment.’
Countertrade
is also
useful when seeking goods, such as technology,
that
have poorly developed markets.
A fourth category of market imperfections
relate to
the cost of information
related to product quality.‘*‘2
Because of real or perceived
problems associated
with the quality image of products made in certain
countries and because of information
asymmetry
between buyers and sellers, it may be very expensive
and time consuming to improve such an image and
to develop markets for products from such countries. Similar problems are faced by countries trying
to sell in markets in politically inhospitable
countries. In such cases countertrade
may provide
a
viable low-cost non-market
alternative.
A fifth category of market imperfections
leading to
countertrade
has to do with the inability of markets
to price uncertainty
and risk over a long time
horizon.‘) In addition, for many goods no forward
market exists. In such cases, countertrade
often
avoids such risk and pricing problems by develop-
and Countertrade
ing offsetting,
symmetrical,
long-term
contracts.
79
goods-denominated,
A sixth category of market imperfections
that leads
to countertrade
has to do with the ability of a
producer
to profit from a sale based only on the
marginal variable cost of production
rather than on
the higher but more complete
average cost of
production. *’ In such cases, base markets, where
prices reflect both fixed and variable costs, must be
segmented from markets where prices reflect only
marginal costs. Countertrade
helps in such segmentation by disguising these price differences.
This
type of market
segmentation,
often artificially
created, is particularly useful in cases where there are
periods of excess capacity.
The impacts of each of these market imperfections
can also be classified along two general dimensions,
quota-type
effects that limit quantities and tax-type
effects that raise costs. Examples
of the former
include export
and import
quotas, ceilings on
interest rates and other regulatory
and licensing
requirements.
Examples of the latter include transactions costs including costs of enforcing contracts,
information
collection and processing costs, taxes,
and other transaction costs reviewed above. Countertrade can create value by providing
a company
with the opportunities
to overcome
either or both
types of market imperfections.
Thus, it can be seen that countertrade
is a rational
and economic
response
designed
to overcome
market imperfections
and national regulation
and
restriction
of cross-border
movement
of capital,
goods, and services (including technology).
Therefore, it can be a highly profitable activity that can
add considerable value, especially since unrestricted
free competition
usually eliminates excess profits.
Consequently,
countertrade
should be examined as
an important
part of corporate strategy.
Countertrade
as Corporate
Strategy
The first decision that the top management
of a
company must make is whether or not to engage in
countertrade.
Corporate strategy for using countertrade should be guided by the nature of countertrade
and the corporate skills necessary to use it successfully. In addition to knowing
where to look for
market imperfections
and, thus, for countertrade
opportunities,
a company must also evaluate potential pitfalls.
Problems and Risks in Countertrade
There are a number of limitations in using countertrade. These include:
(a) Lack of flexibility-‘in
barter there is more
often a want of coincidence
rather than a
coincidence of wants’. It is a less preferable form
than money-based
trade.
80
Long Range
Planning
Vol. 22
June 1989
(‘4 Limited
range of products available for countertrade. The best products are easily sold in cash
markets.
Countertraded
products
often (not
always) may have poor quality, be overpriced,
at times they may be available in surplus and be
hard to move while on other occasions timely
delivery of such products may be a problem.
Usually, they must be heavily discounted. It has
been suggested that ‘The next worst thing to
loosing a countertrade
contract is getting one.’
(4
Products
operating
operating
compete
be totally
into the
marketing
be legally
of where
(4
Dealing
with Foreign
Trade
Organizations
(FTOs) in COMECON
countries takes special
skills and knowledge.
FTOs in the same country
often (usually) do not communicate
with each
other regarding products available for export.
Products are often offered but may have already
been promised to someone else.
(4
Countertrade
negotiations
are not guided by
market prices or Western business methods but
are more likely to be influenced by ideological
stances and a trading mentality.
A number of
negotiating techniques not common in the West
are often used in countertrade
to whittle down a
‘final’ price or offer by a western MNC. Most
such companies often do not realize the need for
a ‘cushion’ during such negotiations.
(f )
offered may not fit the strategic or
profile of a company
that is used to
in a free market. Such products may
with their existing products, they may
unrelated,
or they may not fit well
firm’s normal production
process or
channels. Furthermore,
the firm may
and economically
restricted in terms
it can resell the products.
Countertrade
deals are difficult to evaluate in
terms of the usual corporate
measures such as
ROI and payback because of the lack of market
related prices and costs and because of artificial
exchange rates. Similarly, products acquired by
countertrade
are difficult to value for customs
and tax purposes. Valuation problems may also
lead to anti-dumping
type legal action.
In the case of buy-back
and compensation
arrangements,
a company is often creating new
competition
for itself. For example, Soviet built
Fiats (Ladas) now compete with the Italian Fiats
in Western Europe. Massey-Ferguson
faced the
same problem
after it helped Poland build a
tractor plant.
countertrade
in its
In spite of these limitations,
various forms offers companies many opportunities.
These include the opportunity
to serve for profit
and growth, huge markets not otherwise accessible;
develop a competitive
edge or a defensive strategy
depending
on the situation
in its industry;
an
alternative to foreign equity investment to seek low
cost resources with low levels of risk capital; and
possible opportunities
to move funds out of blocked
currency
areas. Because it is a way to overcome
significant
market imperfections,
it can uncover
opportunities
for making extraordinary
profits and
possibly for developing
a sustainable competitive
advantage.
However,
a company
planning
to
engage in countertrade
must develop or acquire the
skills and resources
necessary
to overcome
the
disadvantages
and difficulties associated with countertrade discussed above.
Organizingfor
Countertrade
The countertrade
should begin with an assessment
of the range of goods to be exported or imported
using countertrade,
along with an overall analysis of
the corporate
need for countertrade.
As indicated
above, an initial assessment of the potential benefit
from countertrade
can be based on an analysis of the
nature and extent of market imperfections
that can
be overcome
with countertrade.
Second, it should
include the asessment of the competitive
advantage
for an in-house countertrade
group vs the use of
outside organizations.
In disposing countertraded
goods, a company can either use these goods in its
own production
process, use its own marketing
channels to sell them to outsiders, discount them to a
trading
company
specializing
in countertraded
goods, or sell them to another marketing organization. Formation
of an Export Trading Company
(focusing on countertrade)
possibly in co-operation
with other companies
(to broaden
the range of
products) and possibly with a financial institution,
should be evaluated.
If an in-house countertrade
unit is to be set up, it
should be able to identify markets for countertraded
goods and be able to structure
and negotiate
countertrade
deals. Thus, it should have people
representing
skills in international
marketing,
purchasing, finance, law, tax insurance and transportation.
An internal countertrade
unit should be able to assess
and manage the risks involved in countertrade
deals.
There are many types of risks in countertrade
deals
besides the usual business risks of changing prices
and evolving competitive
market structure. There
are risks that the country delivering the goods will
not perform in the areas of quality, delivery time, or
quantity of goods. The foreign country may require
the posting of a performance
bond with attendant
risks for the company involved. Some of these risks
can be managed by the appropriate use of insurance
cover. Pricing risks can often be hedged at least
partially by using futures or forward markets.
The company
should also be able to assess and
comply with various laws that may apply to such
transactions.
Because of their nature, countertrade
deals may violate specific product and packaging
laws, laws regarding import relief, anti-trust laws,
and tax laws. The company
needs legal and tax
expertise to manage these aspects of countertrade
deals.
Barter
The company must also decide the location of the
internal
countertrade
unit in the organization.
Should it be part of the purchasing
or marketing
departments or should it be an independent
unit? To
what extent should it be centralized and have global
or regional responsibility?
Should it be a cost or a
profit centre? Answers to these important questions
depend on the nature and extent of the firms’
anticipated
countertrade
business. In any case, the
firm must establish clear financial and operating
iimits and develop a workable business plan for this
internal unit. The identity and functions must be
defined clearly to avoid ‘turf battles internally so
that outsiders know the units’ capabilities. Finally,
such a unit must be headed by an individual
experienced
and qualified in countertrade.
Because
of the importance
of personal contacts and the need
for specialized knowledge
of country differences in
countertrade
opportunities,
such individuals may be
difficult and expensive to recruit.
As this brief discussion indicates, an internal organizational unit for countertrade
can offer a number of
advantages but also needs to have a certain minimum amount ofbusiness to justify its expense and to
develop sufficient depth. Thus, a firm starting in
countertrade
may initially
want to depend
on
specialized outside organizations.
A survey of U.S. companies,’
found that trading
houses were used in arranging
44 per cent of
countertrade
transactions,
in-house
specialists in
22 per cent of the cases, international
banks in 20 per
cent of the cases, and an internal trading subsidiary
in 8 per cent of the cases. Foreign government
agencies and consultants accounted for the remaining 6 per cent of the cases. As for the disposal of
countertraded
goods,
companies
were able to
absorb the goods in their own businesses in 45 per
cent of the cases. They used outside assistance to
dispose of such goods in 55 per cent of the cases.
Conclusions
Countertrade
is growing
in importance
and it is
a sensible economic
response to market imperfections.
Companies
contemplating
engaging
in
countertrade
should develop or acquire the skills
necessary to find market imperfections
exploitable
through
countertrade,
and also the skills and
resources necessary to avoid its pitfalls and overcome its disadvantages. Assembling an organization
that is able to accomplish these tasks is essential for
success in countertrade.
This paper reviewed briefly the various forms of
modern barter and countertrade.
It classified these
and Countertrade
81
various
forms into four categories
with major
differences with regard to the time horizon and the
extent to which money is involved
in the transaction. Next, it provided a conceptual framework
based on market imperfections,
which is useful for
understanding
countertrade
and for identifying
situations where profitable opportunities
for countertrade
are likely to arise. It ended with some
suggestions for the nature ofthe corporate organization necessary for countertrade
and with a brief
checklist
of some possible risks and pitfalls in
countertrade.
The discussion indicates that countertrade is not a temporary
phenomenon
and that its
use is likely to grow even further, especially since
countertrade
is a way to add significantly
to
shareholder
value by providing
opportunities
for
overcoming
market imperfections.
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